FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1005, 23 June 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” MISSING BEER When a policeman in disguUe visited a City shop he was supplied, illicitly, with eight bottles of beer at Is a bottle. He took away three bottles.—Police Court report. Several little beer-bottles—eight to be explicit— Subjects of a deal undoubtedly illicit. Purchased by a policeman in a friendly way. Destined for production as Exhibit A. Several little bottles. Yet, here’s a mystery; The buyer paid for eight, but emerged with three. What, then, happened to the five marines Claimed by the wearer of the borrowed jeans? Hint or speculate we will not, So echo must make answer—“ What?” M.E. HO USE'S WA TER DO O Modern conditions having thrust the old simile of the bull in a china shop into the limbo, “literary gents” will welcome a new one. It is; “A horse in a creche,” and its use is justified by a recent happening in the Karitane Home, Christchurch. Alarmed by a sudden noise of thumping and infantile woe in one of the wards, a night-nurse found a larger and excited horse plunging about on the polished floor of the verandah. Inside the open French windows which gives access to this place were 17 babies, all doing their best to disconcert the intruder in that widemouthed, lusty way that babies have. Not being trained to deal with equine emergencies, the nurse secured assistance, and the horse was led out of the home and across the road. In the morning it was still there, and it was dead. Parents who have paled before the midnight serenades of one or even two infants will have every sympathy for the poor, stricken beast. EXPERTS AND LAYMEN It has been disclosed at a* Press conference dinner held in Coventry that the late Lord Northcliffe began his journalistic career by editing a cycling paper although he had never been guilty of riding a bicycle. If this be the foundation of greatness there are many budding Northcliffe’s in the newspaperdom of every land. Experience has compelled such anomalies, for it lias been found, time and again, that articles on technical subjects from the pen of a layman who can write, are infinitely more readable than articles from an expert who cannot write. Thus men living in flats have known to write excellent agricultural notes, men who do not know the w'hereabouts of middle C on a piano have discussed the work of famous singers with apparent wisdom, and hardened bachelors have answered the queries of love-sick maids and swains. Incidentally, however, we must dissociate this observation from ourselves and Miss Anne Rutledge. In the language of the parlour magician, there are about her “no deceptions whatever.” IS2X-J930 More than 100 years ago—in 1523 to be precise— Sidney Smith, writing in the “Edinburgh Review,” made the following remarks on the question of self-government for Australia: “The time of course will come when it would be in the highest degree unjust and absurd to refuse to that settlement the benefit of popular institu tions. But they are too young, too few, and too deficient for such civilised machinery at present. T cannot come to serve upon the jury—the waters of the Hawkesbury are out and I have a mile to swim these

are the excuses which, in new countries . . . make it desirable that they should live under the simplicity and convenience of despotism.” Did Mr. Sidney Smith dream that in 1930 the same excuse would hold good? For -we learn that, yesterday, the New South Wales Legislative Assembly was adjourned because country members had been held up by the floods. But the “simplicity of despotism” might not suit modern Australia! CROOKEDXESS N.D.: Your paragraphs about Chicago have reminded me of the recent utterance of A 1 Capone, himself a Chicago gang-leader. According to the most reliable journal I have before me he said in his own vernacular way: “A crook is a crook, and there’s something healthy about his frankness in the. matter. But a guy who pretends he’s enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician, who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he is a thief. A hard-work-ing crook will—and can—buy these birds by the dozen, but right down in his heart he hates the sight of them.” Thus we find that in modern Chicago there are considered to be degrees of crookedness from the honest crook to the quite despicable crook. What do you think about it? . . . Not being a gangster the L.O.M.’s only thought is that he has no desire whatever to live in Chicago.